Onwards to Palermo
Greetings from Palermo. Today I saw a man I believe had Down's Syndrome wearing a T-Shirt that said 'go fuck yourself'. It reminded me of the time I saw a 70-year-old Yorkshire woman wearing a T-Shirt that said 'cunt' in bold Helvetica. One world, one people.
Yesterday was a massive drive. The GPS was telling us the main inland road through Sicily was closed which I ignored. They were somewhat closed but there were new road the GPS didn't know about... anyway, I'm even boring myself now.
The point is, we got down to Agrigento, or more specifically Valle dei Templi which are some ancient ruins from Hellenistic times and impressive they were. One of the great things the Christians did was use one of the temples as a church for a few centuries which meant it's been kept in pretty good nick.
From there we drove up to the wild chaos of Palermo - what a dramatic change from our sleepy seaside villa. Nearly killed in the taxi from the airport and then launched into the lawless streets of Palermo. Anyone would think it was Vietnam. I was grateful we didn't go with plan 'A' which was for me to drop Mum and Ariane at the place we were staying while I dropped the car back to the airport.
That said Palermo is an exciting city - really full of life/energy/(some other cliché). It's the capital of Sicily and steeped in pretty amazing history. Our apartment is right in the middle of the old town and we spent a good part of today wandering around (but first Mum has to get us lost walking around the 'new town' looking for the bloody tourist office!)
It seems that half the town is just market-lined streets with scooters flying up an down them with little regard for the size of the crowd they're driving into. I sense it's a city that isn't too interested in the flocks of tourists that come into town - it isn't as 'focused' on it's tourist sites as other cities seem to be which is a nice change.
The site-seeing highlight of the day was the Cattedrale di Palermo whose architecture is described as 'Arabic-Norman' and it doesn't disappoint. I've clearly got some research to do into what the hell the Normans were doing all the way over here and when. However I was delighted to find a couple of Aragonese tombs (including a king) and the crown of Constance of Aragon in the Cattedrale.
Also, a quick Google has uncovered that Quattro Canti which is where the four districts of the old town meet has a 'Spanish' king on each corner. Of course they are all Aragonese kings, as Norman Davis would remind us, there was no 'Spain' that the time (at least I think that was his central message - it was a really long book).
Finally a quick thanks for all the comments that have been coming in from all quarters via just about every medium available. Yes Ariane's pictures are great and probably the only reason this blog is worth reading.
